Neck

Finally back, my SEW761. Sent it to TYMC for bolt holes to be drilled. The neck you see there is a replacement neck so it came without neck screw holes. TYMC did an awesome job, alignment was spot-on.

The new neck also came with no trus rod cover. I choose to leave this as it is; a reminder of what took place & the amount of patience that I put into this guitar to bing it back to life.

Heavy zone

I have a love-hate affair with DiMarzio's Tone Zone. In some guitars it sounds downright nasal with a semi-useless bass response. That fuzzed-out sound... I hate it. In others, it can really give a good punch to heavy distortion. Depicted above is the Tone Zone in my Ibanez SEW761. It sounds awful most of the time (in this guitar).

Today, I decided to pair it up with the Digital Metalizer (MZ-2). Outcome:

• the TZ has an excessive bass response so the MZ-2's EQ was set past midway to enhance treble
• overall tone was more usable in chorus modes. It seems that the TZ needs some kind of a top end booster to make the overall tone less nasal / fuzzy
• tone sounds more palatable when the drive was set to about 3/4 way. Implication - the TZ might be better for crunchy stuff rather than all out metal

Verdict: Nothing changes. The TZ is more of a miss than a hit for me. Strangely, I would want to hear it in action every now & then 😅

Holiday zoning

Played this for the entire morning yesterday before taking time off for lunch. This is the Ibanez SEW761FM, one of the standard offerings equipped with DiMarzio pickups from the factory: Tone Zone (b) / True Velvet (m/n).  

I have no issues with the True Velvet when it comes to tone. These are some of the best single coil offerings DiMarzio has in store & would recommend them to those in need of both good cleans & overdriven tones with twang to boot. The Tone Zone is another story. It's a little finicky & does not cascade good performance into various guitars it's fixed into; hits & misses, mostly. I first had it in an RG560 & it sounded awful there - muffled, bass heavy. I tried a friend's RG3120 which had the TZ  & it sounded awesome. This prompted me to move that spare TZ into one of my Les Pauls & it sounded amazing as well. Then I bought the SIR70FD & that TZ dislikes distortion, it prefers overdrive. In this latest episode, the TZ sounds a little grizzly & tends to fuzz out when the amp gain is turned up. I lowered the pickup a little more into the cavity & that helped somewhat. For some strange reason, this TZ isn't bass inclined like its other siblings, it has more top end. 

This is mostly my experience with DiMarzio in general - unpredictability. When it comes to Seymour Duncan, I do not encounter this headache. The JB for instance, will sound like the JB in any guitar so I know what to expect & have not been proven wrong thusfar. I'm not dissing DiMarzio in any way, in fact, I really like what some of them have to offer for the music genre I peddle - extreme distortion.